


la mort d'adelaide

by placentalmammal



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Goddesses, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 16:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10812345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: In her dreams, Hella revisits the ruins of Nacre and finally finds her chance to apologize to Adelaide Tristé: the Empress of Pearls, the Goddess of Death, the Once and Future Queen of Nacre.





	la mort d'adelaide

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how to tag this. So a general CW for dream-fuckery and god-fuckery and being really sad about murder.

Hella’s dream is like this:

The ruined tower and the broken city, smoke hanging heavy in the air. Between the rubble and the broken stones, she catches a glimpse of a slender figure dressed all in white. Adelaide Tristé: Queen of Death, Empress of Pearls, Reluctant Savior of the Longest Light, Blessed by the Far Sea. Amid the soot and the darkness, she looks like a figure from a pre-Erasure painting: dark hair strung with pearls, shapely body draped in a silver memory of silk and velvet. Adelaide crosses the cracked earth on silent feet, dragging her heavy train behind her.

She goes, and Hella follows, stumbling over the uneven ground.

She can only see her in glimpses and glances. The Queen of Death—now Goddess—is an abstraction, more idea than flesh. And she is beautiful, even more in death than in life. She goes, and Hella follows, struggling to keep pace and she _aches_ : a high, keening note reverberating in the empty space behind her breastbone. An unnamed emotion wells up inside her. Nostalgia for a city she never knew, remorse for crimes that she does not regret.

The Goddess walks in an unbroken line toward the cracked palace at its center, cutting through the wreckage of the city. Hella follows, ice water in her veins, clutching at her empty scabbard with stiff and unfeeling fingers. The landscape is pale and cold around her; she has been walking for ages. _Days or weeks,_ she thinks. _Hours or minutes. Maybe more, maybe less._ Time has no meaning in this fractured dream, this false memory. It hangs suspended in the air like unripe fruit, groaning in protest as Hella shoves it aside.

As she walks, the world around her changes. The city falls away behind her and marble slabs jut up from the scorched earth, broken glass crunching underfoot. Hella licks her cracked lips and tastes blood; it drips down her chin and soaks into her shirt. She regards it with vague dismay. _It didn’t used to be so red_ , she thinks. And then she thinks _but what does ‘used to’ mean in this place_? and she hurries onward, numb from cold. Adelaide has slipped from view, disappearing into the yawning mouth of the ruined palace.

Hella follows.

More than once, she loses her footing and falls to her knees on the carpet of bone and broken glass. When she does, she stares up at the looming palace, despairing. And then she gets to her feet and continues on, joints and ligaments crying out in protest. Even as she moves forward, she is haunted by the knowledge that she does not _have_ to follow Adelaide. She could turn her back on the Empress of Pearls and the ruined city of Nacre. There is an ocean at her back, an ocean and a fleet of Ordennan ships. She could go anywhere, do anything. She could _leave_.

In the end, she does not. She reaches the monstrous palace and mounts its marble steps, leaving smears of red blood on white stone. Without hesitating, Hella moves through the shadowed doorway and into the dim halls. It is dark inside, but her eyes don’t adjust to the darkness, and she wanders without purpose, feeling her way along the smooth walls. As she walks, the palace shifts and changes around her, reconfiguring itself to suit its own quiet logic. Hella does not notice. She presses onward, seeking the throne room at the heart of the palace.

And after a quiet eternity, she finds herself in that vast, echoing chamber.

The throne room is larger than she remembers, and the ceiling has fallen away to expose the bruised sky. The tepid light of unseen stars pours in through the collapsed ceiling, but it does nothing to dispel the gloom of the place.

The floor, once a vast expanse of marble like a frozen lake, has ruptured. Massive fissures have opened up to expose the darkness below: stone mouths twisted into screams, teeth and tongue and gums exposed. And above and beneath the ruined room, Hella catches a glimpse of Nacre-As-It-Was: the Sable Spire and the Fallen tower, the narrow streets with their pearlescent cobblestones, the harbor and the ocean beyond. The images bleed onto one another and catch at her eyes like fish hooks; she cannot tear her gaze away. The ground turns beneath her, and she slips sideways into the vision of the past-present-future.

It is lilies and gleaming brass and an uneaten meal, it is an inescapable embrace and tears that will not fall, it is cold stone and white plaster and echoing voices in an underfull chapel, it is the strange echo of music playing elsewhere. It is a secondhand story, it is an unfamiliar ritual. Blood and wine fill Hella’s mouth and she _cannot look away._

This is beauty of a different sort, greater and more terrible than any Hella has ever seen.

Her mind overflows with strange wonders, filling all the empty spaces inside of her. Time breaks free of its bonds and rushes in around her. A millennium passes in a moment, and Hella stands at the center of it, balancing eternity on the edge of a knife. She stands there, in the eye of the storm, shaking with grief and terror and exultation, transfixed by sights beyond her comprehension. She remains there for a lifetime—a heartbeat—until a gentle voice breaks her reverie. Impossibly, she blinks and looks away, and the vision flickers and fades all around her.

“You’ve lost your sword.”

When she looks up, Hella finds herself in the cracked throne room once again. The palace reorders itself around her, and she realizes that she is kneeling at the foot of a massive alabaster throne. Adelaide sits above her, her expression inscrutable. The color has drained from the room and flowed into her cheeks; she is more beautiful than ever. Hella gasps and sighs, and Adelaide’s expression softens.

“You may speak,” she says, a thread of dark humor in her voice. “We have missed your voice, Ordenna.”

Hella stands, although she has not been given permission to do so, and Adelaide laughs softly.

“You haven’t changed at all,” she says, smiling. It’s a smile to shame the suns and the stars in their heavens, and Hella forgets herself again. Adelaide is beautiful, and in that moment, that’s all Hella can see. And she hasn’t spent much time among godfolk, but if they’re all so beautiful, she can begin to understand why some mortals pledge their lives and deaths to the divines. Why they open their chests to offer their hearts in sacrifice. If all the gods are as beautiful as Adelaide, who could resist?

Hella swallows her blasphemy and drops her gaze from the Empress’ eyes to the hem of her silver gown. “No,” she says, and her voice is oddly flat in the massive room, strange to her ears. She is suddenly aware that she stands barefoot before a _god_ with uncombed hair and ragged fingernails. Blood drips down her face, and her shirt is _red_ when it shouldn’t be. Face burning, she opens her mouth, but the words stick in her throat. “Was I supposed to?”

Adelaide shrugs. “Living things change constantly,” she says. “Only dead things and gods stay the same.” She lets out a hollow laugh, unamused. “We are both.”

Hella bites her tongue and she dares to meet Adelaide’s eyes. It’s a mistake, and the silence grows between them while she searches for words. At last, she swallows her uncertainty and speaks. “I’m sorry,” she says, “about killing you, I mean.”

“It can’t be helped.” Adelaide sighs, and her composure slips, just for a moment. Something wistful and soft flickers across her face like a cloud passing in front of the sun. Whatever it is, it’s gone in an instant, replaced by her mask of wry, godly detachment. “There are some things that even gods can’t touch, Ordenna.”

Hella speaks before she thinks better of it. “My name is Hella, actually,” she says, and the rebuke comes across sharper than she intended. She cringes inwardly, but Adelaide laughs.

“Hella,” repeats the Goddess of Death, her full lips curling into another of her brilliant smiles. “It suits you.”

“I—” Hella falters. “Thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” says Adelaide. “Now, you _do_ realize that you’ve lost your sword, don’t you?”

Blinking stupidly, Hella looks down to her belt and finds her sheath empty, her sword absent. “No,” she says, and then she looks up, suspicion swelling in her belly. “Did you take it?”

The other woman—the Goddess, so high and grand—shakes her head no. “I did not,” she says, and she does not correct her use of the word ‘I.’ “And I couldn’t have, even if I wanted to. This is _your_ dream, Hella.”

Hella stares at her, uncomprehending. “If this is my dream,” she says slowly, “then why am I covered in blood?”

Her words startle a laugh from Adelaide. It’s all warmth and rough edges, very different from her earlier laughter. It is an undignified, unrestrained snort, the sort of laugh that gets young lords and ladies sent up to bed without supper. “I don’t suppose it’s your guilty conscience?” says the Goddess, stifling giggles.

Hella laughs along without knowing why. Adelaide’s face is alight with merriment, dark stars shining in her eyes. She is out-of-place in the ruined throne room, dressed as she is in silver and pearls. Adelaide Tristé deserves an unbroken throne, a palace of alabaster and ivory and white opal. She should not be alone in a crumbling palace, Queen of Rot and Ruination and Remorse.

There’s a lump in Hella’s throat. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice catching. For a moment, she stands silent, overwhelmed and unable to convey the weight of her sincerity. “I didn’t— if I’d known—”

“Hella,” says Adelaide, and the bright, fixed star of her voice cuts through the weight of her misery. “You did what you had to, Hella.”

She shakes her head. Burning tears roll down her cheeks. “I had a choice,” she says raggedly, voice rising in a sob. “He didn’t _make_ me, I could have said ‘no.’” Sick with shame and fury, she scrubs at her face with her fists.

“ _Any_ of us could have done _any_ thing.” Adelaide’s voice is cold fire. “I— we became the Empress of Pearls when our brother abdicated. If he had stayed, if he had not killed our father—” She takes a deep breath to steady herself before she speaks again. “Each of us is a victim of circumstance,” she says softly. “Even those among us with king’s blood on our hands.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” says Hella.

“You’re not meant to,” says Adelaide. “You’re _alive_ , Hella, you’re meant to feel pain and grief and guilt. It’s meant to live inside of you and to eat at your bones.”

“But _why_?” Hella’s voice breaks like waves. She tears at her hair, maddened by the Goddess and by her own guilt and grief, tormented by the storm inside her. “Calhoun is _dead_ , you’re _dead_ , my friends are never going to forgive me! What’s left?”

Adelaide bows her head. “Growth,” she says. “You’re alive, Hella. It’s not too late, you can still change things.” She looks up, a sad smile playing on her lips. “You can do what I can’t. You can save the world.”

“But why me?”

The Goddess looks up and smiles fully, radiant once again. “Because I chose you,” she says simply, and she stands (towering over Hella, so large in death) and kisses Hella fully on the lips. And it’s the strangest kiss she’s ever received: it boils her blood and sets her nerves aflame, burning her from the inside. Her mind fills with divinity and her knees go weak; she is only vaguely aware of Adelaide’s arms around her, holding her body upright while gods’ light courses through her veins.

Her vision goes white, and she wakes gasping in her bedroll, a few feet from the embers of the dying fire. Hadrian sits watch, sword in his lap, Kodiak curled about his feet. At Hella’s cry, he turns to look at her, concern in his deep eyes.

“You alright?” he says, and Hella nods. Sighing, he reaches down and pets the dog, working his fingers into its thick fur. “Go back to sleep,” he says tiredly. “It’ll be morning soon enough.”

She nods again and lays still, blankets pulled up to her chin. She does not sleep. She looks up at the starry sky and thinks about silver silk drawn across dark skin, about pearls gleaming white in a cloud of black hair. Dawn rolls in like the tide: slowly, inevitably.

**Author's Note:**

> come visit me on [tumblr](http://placentalmammal.tumblr.com/) and yell about the murder gf and her ghost queen wife
> 
> also I made a (short) soppy playlist to go with this, [enjoi](https://open.spotify.com/user/placentalmammal/playlist/3rNdH4PsdKlr7UlHpZ2Eee)


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